The World: Latest Stories

In South Korea, mastery of American English is a status symbol. Families send their kids to academies chosen for their American instructors. We hear from an English teacher from Ireland who was told by a Korean recruiter, "You don't speak English."

China’s economy is cooling off, but that hasn’t stopped globetrotting Chinese tourists from sightseeing. Chinese tourists are expected to soon be the largest group of overseas visitors to the US, and cities across the nation are trying to cash in.

The UN surveyed factors affecting gender equality in 151 countries, and found that US is coming up short. Part of the reason? Workplace inequality, but also a rise in the number of women dying from complications of childbirth.

Two satellites accidentally launched into the wrong orbit may help researchers test an aspect of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

These days, scientists are increasingly interested in thinking about multiple universes, but the idea of a multiverse is at least 2500 years old according to professor Mary-Jane Rubenstein and chair of religion at Wesleyan University.

A landscape artist in Scotland is trying to help us experience the multiverse with his work of landscape art, “The Crawick Multiverse”

More than 2,500 cops from as far away as New Hampshire and New York responded to the pursuit and search for the Boston Marathon bombers, and it wasn’t always clear who was in charge.

Community colleges often have abysmally low graduation rates. Could this be in part because we don’t hold community college students in high enough esteem?

Fifty-three years ago, a sailor found a scrap of paper in his barracks. At the time, he didn't know it would lead him to his future wife.

Kansiime Anne is a comedic superstar in East Africa. But she's not just making people laugh. She's also starting conversations.

A major attack by ISIS has been defeated by Kurdish Peshmerga forces north of Mosul

The US government has wasted billions of dollars in Afghanistan, and until now, no one has added it all up. Project after project blundered ahead ignoring history, culture and warnings of failure.

Germany is expanding its counterterrorism security forces. But local police in the nation's capital worry that they would be "cannon fodder" in the event of a terrorist attack.

Love for Adele crosses all borders and languages.

This year for the first time ever, a Canadian whisky was selected as the world's best in the Whisky Bible. But one Canadian whisky connoisseur says there's plenty of fine Canadian whiskies that are worthy of praise, and that singling out only one as the world's best is ridiculous.

Media activist Rami Jarrah tells the story of a father who could afford to flee the besieged city of Aleppo, but has instead decided to stay.

Abby Wambach played her last game last night. She also shut down all of her social accounts and said she wants people to forget her — because that means the next generation of women athletes will have taken over the spotlight.

Woman-bashing seems to be a popular sport on Kenyan talk radio and weekend lifestyle sections. Buzzfeed's Jina Moore looks at the consequences.

Catherine Njeri discovered yoga at a time of crisis in Kenya, when a disputed presidential election threw the country in turmoil. She found yoga fostered rare moments of calm in camps for displaced survivors. Now years on, she helps others learn to teach it through the Africa Yoga Project.

Kenyan women are gaining weight fast, especially in the capital Nairobi. The reality show "Slimpossible" tries to send a message that healthy eating is still important.

The woman tasked with revamping language education in the Boston Public Schools grew up in East L.A. with a mother who was punished for speaking Spanish in elementary school.

As violence escalates back in their home country, Burundians in Pittsburgh keep up a tradition of prayer and song born in refugee camps

Burundi is edging toward civil war, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Meanwhile, the African Union has warned that Africa should "not allow another genocide to take place on its soil."

With California heading into its fifth year of drought, many in the state are looking for more water-efficient ways of growing food. One transplanted Israeli farmer is helping show the way.

Your genome tells part of your story; so do your biometrics, data about how and where you choose to live your life. A new approach to medicine, and genomics, aims to bring together many different layers of such data, resulting in precision medicine, targeted for you. What is that worth to you? Enough to give up some privacy? Enough to pool your data with many others, so scientists can better understand how and when certain genes are expressed? In southern China, leading genomics sequencing company BGI, and a new venture, iCarbonX, are among the global players exploring what's possible.

The first observant Sikh of his generation to join the US military is on a campaign to eliminate the dress code that has blocked all but a handful of Sikhs from serving the country they love.

Wen Stephenson was a moderate liberal and a journalist with NPR before an epiphany about global warming changed everything.

Walla Walla Community College in Washington State won the Aspen Prize for community college excellence in 2013. Here’s the school's secret to success.

George Lucas cites many influences for his legendary "Star Wars" series but one unknown influence may have been the French comic, "Valerian and Laureline," by Jean-Claude Mézières. You can see influences on everything from the millennium falcon to the characters of Jabba the Hutt and Chewbacca. And, perhaps, an infamous bikini.

Afghan journalists like Samiullah Mahdi are creating popular, controversial TV programs that take big risks to reach an eager audience.

Sorry, Pele. Abby Wambach, who retires this week, will be remembered as the greatest soccer player of all time. Man, or woman.

Issues around national security dominated the 5th debate among the Republican Party's presidential candidates. But some have criticized them for exploiting popular fears.

Badrinath Singh and Asha Devi became activists after the death of their daughter in a gang rape in New Delhi. But three years after her death, the couple wonder if anything has really changed.

If you use Lush-brand cosmestics, some of the materials included are grown by women farmers in Kenya.

It wasn't until he was appointed to the California Supreme Court that Goodwin Liu discovered he was more than a justice — he was an Asian American role model.

Soul-searching in San Bernardino County over school cops’ tactics and attitudes.

Back in the 1970s, NASA scientist James Hansen was one of the first to recognize the dangerous impacts that rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions could have on Earth’s climate. Now this climate scientist has become an activist in the climate movement, lending his scientific voice to calls for urgent action.

Los Angeles authorities cancelled classes for more than a half a million school kids Tuesday after receiving what they called a "credible threat."

A powerful typhoon rolled through an island in the central Philippines Monday. It's the same island that was slammed by Typhoon Haiyan just two years ago. This time, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated before the storm hit. It's a reminder — just days after the Paris climate agreement, that a lot of work still has to be done to adapt to rising seas and stronger storms.

Kenyan women are creating beautiful clothes, though Kenyan women seem unsure about buying them. But women in the country's burgeoning fashion business say they're not giving up.

Saudi Arabia has announced the creation of an alliance of Muslim nations to fight terrorism. Thirty-four nations are taking part. But questions remain over who they will be targeting.

It's certainly a difficult time to be Muslim in the US. And it's a really difficult time to be a Muslim American women. Thankfully, there's a manual to help.

The Pinta tortoises of the Galapagos Islands have been extinct since the last one, Lonesome George, died in 2012. Now, scientists are trying to revive the species using hybrid descendants recently discovered.

Colombia has a lot going for it as a tourist destination: beaches, mountains, colonial cities and the Amazon. But the country is still battling its image as one of the world's most dangerous places.

Texas plumber Mark Oberholtzer has filed a lawsuit against a car dealership after he traded in his truck with the promise they would remove the decals for his business that were on it. That didn't happen — and making matters worse, it wound up in the hands of ISIS.

Some one-in-seven people in developing countries die from conditions caused by exposure to high levels of pollution. COP21 might reverse that, but not before millions more people die.

There is vast potential for drone use in the developing world. In recent years, an explosion of initiatives has popped up across the continent of Africa, from unmanned peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Facebook’s high-hovering drones that bring the Internet to remote places. But the technology has proliferated faster than regulations can keep up. A couple countries have banned them altogether, including Kenya. Recent terrorist attacks have much to do with the restrictions there, but innovators think the country has more to gain from drones than it has to lose.

In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, the Taliban have gained a new foothold, taking over organised crime and kidnapping networks to fund their activities. Reporter Mobeen Azhar was given unique access the police squad charged with tackling them: Karachi's so-called 'Taliban Hunters'.